NEW YORK — In a survey that challenges widely held stereotypes, U.S. students rate their schools higher and take more business, computer and economics classes than Japanese youngsters do.

The Junior Achievement-Gallup International Youth Survey of 750 American and 790 Japanese junior and senior high school students released Friday found:

56 percent of U.S. students say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in public schools, compared with 44 percent of Japanese;

More U.S. students than Japanese students claim they are “very interested” in studying math, arts and music, science, and business. Japanese interest exceeds that of Americans only in social studies and history — 36 percent to 33 percent — and foreign language study — 43 percent to 31 percent;

Nine out of 10 American students think their high schools do a good job teaching math and English, while only 70 percent of Japanese felt their schools teach math well and 68 percent believe schools teach Japanese well;

U.S. students are three times more likely to complete business or economics courses than Japanese students are: 54 percent of U.S. students say they’ve taken such courses and 29 percent say they plan to. Among Japanese, 18 percent say they’ve taken such classes and 20 percent say they plan to;

41 percent of American youngsters polled have studied computer science and 23 percent say they plan to, while 12 percent of Japanese have studied computers and 23 percent say they plan to.